Round six of the Italian Rally Championship, the Rally del Salento held last weekend, saw the Fiat Grande Punto Rally back on its strongest surface – asphalt – following several recent outings on gravel, and lead driver Paolo Andreucci keen to extend his lead in the championship. Team-mate Andrea Navarra, now fairly assured behind the wheel of the new rally machine, was also confident of his chances of realistically targeting the top of the leaderboard.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, the rally was organised, as usual, by the ACI Lecce with the co-operation of the Scuderia Piloti Salentini. This year the competition was once again able to boast the prestigious coefficient 10 for the European Rally Cup, South West region, and as well as being valid for Italian Rally Championship, it also counted for the Fiat Abarth Trophy, the Fiat Panda Trophy and for the “Challenge delle Polizie”. This year’s edition was promoted by Regione Puglia, Province of Lecce and the Municipality of Gallipoli, with the start and the finish switched from the Piazza Mazzini in Lecce to the Piazzale della Capitaneria di Porto in Gallipoli, one of the most dramatic settings in which to celebrate the rally’s 40th anniversary as well as the 80th anniversary of the ACI Lecce.

Thursday afternoon would see the opening superspecial stage, which had been moved from Via del Mare to ‘La Conca’ kartdrome, when thousands of spectators would have the opportunity of seeing the performances of the champions of the Italian series close-up. The number of entries this year amounted to 67, and the participation of the main protagonists of the Italian Rally Championship was assured: Piero Longhi (Subaru Impreza STi Spec. C), who won the 2005 edition of this rally; former Italian champion and present championship leader Paolo Andreucci (Fiat Grande Punto Rally); Andrea Aghini (Subaru Impreza STi Spec. C); Renato Travaglia (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX); Andrea Dallavilla (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX); Andrea Navarra (Fiat Grande Punto Rally); and Franco Cunico (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX).

The first leg, on Friday 16th June, consisted of a loop of three special stages, to be repeated three times. The opening stage of each loop was a new addition to the event, the 10.67km Martignano (run at 10:18am, 1:34pm and 4:50pm), which joined the traditional 10.50km Santa Cesarea (run at 11:13am, 2:29pm and 5:45pm) and Guggianello, at 12.85km (11:48am, 3:04pm and 6:20pm). The second leg, Saturday 17th June, took place on the Ionic Coast, kicking off at 9am in the morning.  Several of the special stages of that day were repeated twice: Specchia, at 16.27km; Palombara, the longest stage of the rally at 28.01km; and the 12.50km Ciolo. Reconnaissance of the special stages took place on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th June while the test of the cars, the administrative checks and scrutineering were carried out on Tuesday morning.

While the factory-entered Fiat Grande Punto S2000s would be grabbing spectators’ attention at the front, they wouldn’t be the only Fiat rally cars taking part on this year’s Rally del Salento, as nine Fiat Panda Rally Cup runners would be contesting the Panda Trophy. This championship is organised by Fiat with the aim of getting young people interested in the sport. The eligible car is the Fiat Panda 1200 Gruppo A Kit, equipped and managed by Supergara, who, before the administrative checks and scrutineering, chooses at random the drivers who will compete with them. There are ten rounds of the Fiat Panda Rally Cup this year and the series has a prize fund of 365,500 euros.

With three wins in five Italian series events to his name thus far this year, Paolo Andreucci was targeting nothing short of victory, especially as he was forced to withdraw from this event last year.  However, the Tuscan star reckoned that it would be a tough contest with several crews capable of snatching victory.
 

“I just believe this edition of the Rally del Salento will be very hard-fought, because we have at least four or five able to compete for the victory,” said the Fiat factory driver at the shakedown. Meanwhile, his N.technology team-mate Andrea Navarra, who is now feeling much more acclimatised to his new rally car, also expected to challenge for the victory: “It will not be an easy competition,” he stated prior to the start of the event. “However, I expect to be among the leaders in the classification, since our Fiat Grande Punto Super2000 has been set up as well as possible.”

The rally kicked off with the traditional superspecial stage on Thursday evening, and it started in the best possible way for the N.technology Fiat team. Along the length of the ‘show’ stage, thousands of spectators clapped from their vantage points in the stands located around La Conca International Circuit in Muro Leccese, with Andreucci and Navarra in their Grande Punto Rallys the undisputed queens of the show. Andreucci was nine-tenths of a second faster his team-mate and 5.4 seconds clear of Stefano Bizzarri, who was the third-placed driver and the first of the two-wheel drive runners in his Renault Clio Super 1600, beating young Luca Rossetti in his Peugeot 206 Super 1600 by just a tenth of a second.

That, however, was as good as it got for the Fiat factory team, as Leg One on Friday saw their fortunes take a disastrous turn. Andreucci was hit by electrical problems on the very first stage of the day, and his N.technology team were forced to withdraw the car at the day’s first service park. Fiat’s hopes now rested on the shoulders of Navarra, and he was keeping up the team’s honour, running in the thick of the action in third place.  This became second by the end of the day when Andrea Aghini broke a valve guide, forcing him down the order. The driver from Cesena arrived at overnight parc ferme 52.8 seconds behind rally leader Renato Travaglia (Mitsubishi Evo IX) and with 11.3 seconds in hand over Piero Longhi (Subaru Impreza STi). “The only problem today concerns the waste of time,” said Navarra, who claimed stage victories on SS9 (Santa Cesarea 3) and SS10 (Guggianello 3), as well as posting two third-fastest times (on SS6 and SS7). “I cannot go faster, as happened during the twelfth [Palombara] special stage.”

The final day (Leg Two) opened with SS11 and fourth-quickest time on the stage for Navarra kept him in second place. However, the next stage, Palombara, didn’t really suit the Grande Punto, and he dropped 27 seconds to stage winner Travaglia, dropping him down the order to fourth place overall. The final four stages of the day saw Navarra posting a second, fifth and fourth-fastest time before he ended the event with the best time on SS16, 9.4 seconds faster than Sandro Sottile (Mitsubishi Evo IX), as he chased down Aghini in third place who had gone into the final test just 10 seconds ahead in the overall classification. The reigning European Rally Champion Renato Travaglia completed his crushing start-to-finish dominance of the event, though, to record a 42.3 second win (his third visit to the podium after success in 2001 and 2002) over Longhi. Aghini was third, just 1.6 seconds ahead of Navarra in fourth place, who despite his ‘maximum attack’ efforts on the final stage was not quite able to dislodge the Subaru driver from the podium.

Thanks to the 8 championship points he was rewarded with for finishing in second place, the ever-consistent Piero Longhi has now just squeezed past Andreucci to push the Fiat driver off the top of the Italian Rally Championship drivers’ classification for the first time this year, albeit by just one point: he has 39 to Andreucci’s 38. Navarra claimed four more points to move himself up to 29 points, a healthy 8 points clear of Travaglia (who doubled his total championship points tally last weekend thanks to his win) and Luca Cantamessa.

40th Rally del Salento - Final Classification: 1. Travaglia-Granai (Mitsubishi Lancer) 2 hr 24’42”3; 2. Longhi-Imerito (Subaru Impreza) + 42”3; 3. Aghini-D’Esposito (Subaru Impreza) + 54”6; 4. Navarra-D’Amore (Fiat Grande Punto) + 55”2; 5. Dallavilla-Vernuccio (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 1’53”6; 6. Ratiglia-Zanella (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 2’19”0; 7. Perego-De Luis (Subaru Impreza) + 2’39”9; 8. Rossetti-Chiarcossi (Peugeot 206) + 2’46”5;  9. Sottile-Gorni (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 2’52”5; 10. Laganà-Comperchio (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 3’53”5.
 
Italian Rally Championship - Drivers' Classification (after 6 rounds): 1. Longhi (Subaru) 39 points; 2. Andreucci (Fiat) 38; 3. Navarra (Fiat) 29; 4. Travaglia (Mitsubishi) and Cantamessa (Subaru) 20.

by Edd Ellison and Shant Fabricatorian